1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a power recovery system for protecting the integrity of an electronic controller system by inhibiting application of DC electric power to heavy load equipment to which DC electric power was supplied until a user determines that application of DC electric power should be reinitiated.
2. Description of Related Art
Electronic controller system (ESC) power plants are commonly used to supply telecommunications equipment with low voltage direct current (DC) electric power. To obtain DC electric power, ECS power plants typically convert single phase alternating current (AC) electric power supplied by a commercial AC utility transmission system to DC electric power using rectifiers. Unfortunately, commercial AC electric power is subject to frequent interruption. Therefore, in order to maintain reliability, ECS power plants often utilize batteries to supply the loads with DC electric power until AC electric power has been restored.
In conventional ECS power plants, once AC electric power is restored, the rectifiers automatically and immediately resume application of DC electric power to the loads so that service is resumed as soon as possible. However, these conventional designs are prone to load equipment damage caused by in-rush current which frequently occurs when ECS power plants resume application of DC electric power to the loads once AC electric power is restored. In-rush current is an undesired surge of electric current, which may cause extensive damage to the chips, integrated circuits, circuit packs or other types of heavy load equipment connected to the rectifiers. When damaged, this heavy load equipment can require large expenditures of time and money to repair and/or replace.